


Demographics

by maximum_overboner



Category: Villainous (Cartoon)
Genre: Adult Content, Dark Comedy, Gen, M/M, Sitcom japes, but that's the fun of it!, dementia is a one woman hurricane, extremely... extremely dark sitcom japes, flug and black hat have a dynamic but it's... it's really weird and unhealthy, flug isn't... he isn't doing too well, gotta boost those sales black hat get cracking, if you've read any of my other villainous fics you get the gist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 20:55:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11471517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maximum_overboner/pseuds/maximum_overboner
Summary: After a catastrophic drop in sales, Black Hat Incorporated needs to appeal to a wider audience. The card-carrying supervillain, dangling a caped crusader over a pit of lava. The average Joe with a meddlesome neighbour.The people that want to have sex with the extradimensional supermonster.





	Demographics

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve decided to be silly with this one! I poke fun at myself quite a bit in this, I wouldn’t take this too seriously 
> 
> Oh, as an aside, I've chosen to use the English spelling of dementia. just so you know that it's a deliberate choice and not a series of typos 
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

Flug once considered himself to be a picky eater. He had always been on the reserved side regarding food, not to an extent that caused him problems but certainly more than the average person. He didn’t like tomatoes, or any fruit or vegetable with that strange, mushy texture. He didn’t like onions, he didn’t like cheese, he didn’t like fish, and he didn’t like condiments. And yet, despite this, he had been forced to acclimatise to each and every one on account of the limited amount of ingredients available to him in the mansion and found that, eventually, he came to enjoy (or at the very least tolerate) them. After that he came to enjoy cooking. It was a respite. Though he loved his work as a scientist it now came with a sword of Damocles looming over him in the form of Black Hat, eager to jump on him for his failures. But Black Hat never ate the meals he made and Dementia would complain no matter what given that her diet consisted almost entirely of cereal and vodka, so there was no pressure. A way to wrest some control out of the day, and he loved control. If he liked the food he would eat it, if he didn’t he wouldn’t make it again. Today felt like a chicken casserole day.

Flug walked into the kitchen, flipping the light on and collapsing to the ground in a panic when Black Hat stared back at him from the kitchen chair, steepling his fingers.

“Good afternoon, Flug.”

Flug calmed his breathing, clutching his chest.

“How long have you been here?”

“Three hours.”

“You’ve been sat in the dark for three hours?”

“I thought about calling you in earlier but I like being dramatic. Sit down. We have business to discuss.”

“Please don’t let this end in another alleyway beating. Please. My therapist says I have ‘rapidly degenerating mental health’ and that I shouldn’t help you do those anymore, no matter how much I want to.”

“Your therapist says a lot of things I don’t care about, sit down.”  

Flug did, steadying himself. Black Hat was drinking coffee from a mug and reaching into a shrink-wrapped package. Flug mourned the loss of his meal, one of the very few recipes passed down to him.

Black Hat ate a chicken thigh. Raw. Flug, barely audible but devastated, interjected.

“Sir, I was going to make a casserole out of those.”

“Shut up. I stress-eat. Go back to cowering, whipping boy. Don’t shame me in my own house.”

“Yes, sir.”

“... Do you want one?”

“Do I want a raw chicken thigh.”

“Yeah.”

“... No, sir.”

“No accounting for taste.”

He resumed, the smack of raw meat filling the kitchen as they looked at one another. Black Hat nodded to Dr Flug.

“Are those shorts.”

“Yes, sir. It’s July.”

Black Hat cringed as if struck.

“Look at your knees. They look like cottage cheese in a burlap sack. I’ve killed people and even I think this is going too far.”

“You’ve seen them before, th-they’re not that bad.”

“But that’s when you’ve been naked and there was too much of you to mock, it was like being buffeted by a tidal wave of inadequacy. Your knees are so sad that I can actually feel my self-esteem lowering as we speak. You’re like an event-horizon of pride. You have so little that your body is trying to fill the deficit with mine. Be more ashamed than you are.”

Flug sighed, not protesting. That sounded about right.

“Now cheer up immediately; sales are down and we need to boost them. Ideas?”

“Don’t work me to the bone. Let me rest. It will make my inventions better.”

 _“Good_ ideas.”

“... Appeal to a wider audience?”

Black Hat blinked. He choked back an entire bone in one snap then tapped his chin.

“We need to grab as many viewers as possible. We need something to draw in everyone. The villain market, that’s our bread and evil butter, they always buy, but the average household… Everyone has someone they hate. Hmm! Good work, Flug.”

Flug blinked, his heart fluttered and soared. He smiled for the first time in months.

“... Thank you.”

“We just need to draw them in. Oh, but hurry this up; I’ve hired fourteen burly, sweaty Finnish men to come over and beat me while I masturbate and if you’re here when it starts my instincts will take over and I’ll be forced through ancient rites to drop-kick you.”

“Oh, of course, I forgot it’s Wednesday. But why-- why are they always _Finnish?”_

“Have you seen the suicide rate for that country, Flug? I’m the only thing they can look forward to. This is borderline charitable. I hired fourteen because thirteen will throw themselves under a bus on the way here.”

“U-Uh--”

“I didn’t know you hated philanthropy so much. I think I’m gaining some respect for you. Took you long enough.”

Another little shot of self-esteem, even if it was misplaced.

“Appealing content, appealing content… Flug, you’re a miserable excuse for a human being; what is it people like?”

Flug thought. He wasn’t the most well acquainted with ‘people’ in general, usually being forced to the sidelines and then, eventually, coming to seek the sidelines out. Black Hat, shamefully, was the closest thing he had to a friend. It wasn’t that Flug was abrasive, it was that he wasn’t abrasive enough and thus people just stormed right over him without a second thought, taking what they needed and vanishing without even a cursory glance in his direction.

Flug wanted to hurt them. He wanted to hurt them all, very badly. He shivered, rubbing his knees.

He came to, remembering that he was being asked a question.

“That’s… That’s a very broad question, um--”

“Raves?”

“Well--”

“Hold a glowstick when I speak.”

“Actually, I think people like cute… Cuddly animals? Things like kittens, puppies, teddy bears--”

“Like that teddy bear you keep in your closet,” Black Hat said.

“Please leave Senator Sugarcane out of this. He was a gift from my grandpappy when I was born. Seeing what I do now, my grandpappy... Would be so disappointed in me...”

Black Hat put a reassuring claw on his shoulder. It left an imprint of chicken-slime. Cleansing this room of salmonella was going to be a nightmare.

“Don’t worry, Flug. I am also extremely disappointed in you,” he soothed.

“... Thanks.”

“Anytime. But cute animals, cute--”

Black Hat snapped his fingers, delighted with his own genius.

 _“Put 5.0.5 in the background,”_ they said in unison with Flug having come to this obvious conclusion at the very start of this discussion.

Flug tapped his fingers to each other, chewing over his next statement.

“Do you take constructive criticism?”

“No, but you’re the idiot that just told me you have something to say so say it anyway.”

Flug cleared his throat.

“Please try and keep focused. You’re very professional when we have a product to sell but you lose all direction when you start talking about yourself.”

“How dare you! How fucking dare you! I’m focused! I’m as honed as a laser-beam to the balls, I’m extremely focused; perhaps too focused! Concise is not a powerful enough word for what I am, Flug! I am epigrammatic, I am succinct, I am other synonyms for concise that I _don’t know at this point in time!_ ”

Flug quailed.

“You’re so good at getting to the point, boss!”

“I, Black Hat, am the best at getting to the point!”

“The best!”

“The very best!”

“Please stop shouting; I’m afraid!”

“No! More plans, Flug! Ideas!”

Flug wracked his brain before landing on a good point.

“What do we do with Dementia? She’s ruined the last three broadcasts.”

Black Hat threw his arms up in exasperation.

“I don’t know! She’s a pest, but she does good grunt-work. Do you know I caught her in my room last week? Huffing my suit jacket like an oxygen mask and fondling herself.”

“Sir, you… You did that with one of my shirts a few days ago. I caught you when I came out of the shower.”

“It’s different when I do it. I’m Black Hat. But something is wrong with that woman.”

Flug looked at him flatly, waiting for him to realise that he didn’t have room to talk. Black Hat didn’t, so Flug chose not to mention it.

“She’s been sending me anonymous letters.”

“Then how do you know it’s from her?”

“Because she slavishly pours over descriptions of ‘watching me from afar’ and ‘secret desires’ then gets too excited and signs her name at the end.”

“Oh.”

“She sent me a cast iron mould of her vagina.”

_“Pardon.”_

“Cast iron. She doesn’t know how to do that. She used my money to hire someone to do all this nonsense, then gift wrapped it and left it outside my door. I didn’t know what to think. I ended up staring at it for five minutes, then went back to bed and had a good long think about my life.”

“I--”

“My money. My mind shut down. You know how people foam at the mouth when I show them what I look like, _really_ look like? That.”

Flug clapped his hand to his mouth over the bag, noting that a serious discussion laced with tension had turned into coworkers gossiping over lunch. The thought made him feel confused and, admittedly, a little warm.

“She’s been emailing me stories as well,” Black Hat sighed, using a chicken bone to pick at the flesh stuck in his teeth.

“Stories?”

“You don’t know the half of it. There's one where I kidnap and forcibly impregnate her. It’s dire, Flug. It’s dire. The things Dementia gets up to… What sort of lunatic would write pornographic fiction of me? _Me?”_

Flug nodded sagely.

“Only a real weirdo.”

“In any case, we need as many viewers as possible. Bring in that crowd. Maybe I’ll… Show off an ankle or something, ugh. But you’re right, we do need to think of something.”

Flug lit up a cigarette, lifting his bag just enough to inhale, now fully committed to petty gossip.

“Ever since Dementia found that Zumba DVD in the loft she’s been able to bend sheet metal with her thighs. If we try locking her in the Please Co-Operate Room again she won’t just kick the door off; she’ll kick it hard enough to hit the other side of the house.”

“I always knew Zumba would be my downfall. And she’s immune to my non-euclidian wits. They just make her more persistent. Can’t you jingle a set of keys in front of her?”

“That only worked once.”

“Best five hours of my life.”

“It was a blissful time for all of us, sir.”

Black Hat motioned for the cigarette. Flug handed it over, watched him puff, then waited for him to return it. He didn’t.

“I want you to hack into every government mainframe in the world,” Black Hat said, “and broadcast the video to their leaders. Get some real panic going.”

Flug blinked.

“Boss, I... I don’t know how to do that.”

“Of course you do. You know computers. You reset the wifi router last week. I remember because I was downloading pictures of Benedictine monks so I could print them and scratch out their eyes.”

“I know how they work, I can build one, but I don’t know the first thing about hacking, sir.”

“Oh, what are you even a doctor of? Being useless?”

“Aero--”

“Stop there; I’m already bored. I’m getting flashbacks to those times we slept together.”

Flug heard the sound of a massive vehicle, presumably a bus, screeching to a halt outside and a meaty thud, followed by screaming. Black Hat grit his teeth, so tense that it looked like his eyeball was about to fire from the socket.

“If that was Sven I am going to combust; he is the _only one_ that knows how to put me in a proper headlock.”

 

* * *

 

 

The stage was set. No item this week, just a clear message. Pre-recorded, the editing would extract the maximum amount of terror from every frame. Terror would drive people to watch after this took off. It was like watching the news, the grim fascination that comes with witnessing a catastrophe roll in like a tsunami and pull out, dragging innocent people with it. And watchers meant buyers! Black Hat had taken well to sales. Killing swathes himself was fun, sure, he wasn’t made of stone, but the challenge of getting other people to do it, that was where the real gristle was. He chuckled at the prospect. He would extract tearful respect from the masses with grace, opulence and splendour.

Behind him, Flug held his glowsticks, ready to begin.

5.0.5 was in the frame at the very back, next to the cabling, just prominent enough to be noticed but not enough to draw attention away from the foreground. To keep him still Flug had given him a ball of yarn, which he was swatting at and rolling under his paw. As Black Hat took care of his pre-filming rituals, sharpening his teeth with a file, he heard Flug coo.    

“Dr Flug.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just-- that’s really cute. Look at him. He loves the yarn.”

“Get in the evil mindset, Flug. It’s there for the drooling masses, not for you.”

“I’m going to get him another ball the next time I go shopping.”

_“Flug! Attention!”_

“Hmm--? Oh, oh I’m--”

Flug cleared his throat, tearing his eyes away from the heartwarming spectacle.

“Is the camera rolling.”

“Should be.”

“Excellent. Look approachable, but also dangerous and malevolent.”

“Uh--”

Black Hat began his set whilst Flug attempted something between a smile and a frown behind him, hoping it registered through the bag.

“Greetings, you puny, contemptuous whelps! Black Hat here with a--”

He took the time to savour the syllables like he was making love to them.

 _“-- Special broadcast._ It appears some of you don’t bother to watch my show, well! Think of the opportunities you’re missing out on! Nosy neighbours, ex-wives, that one person at work you don’t know the name of but it’s been too long so you can’t ask anyone without it being awkward? All dead! For the lowest prices on the market. Isn’t that right, Dr Flug?"

Flug looked to the camera, then to Black Hat, then to the camera, then back to Black Hat.

“Y-Yes, sir!”

“You’re going flaccid,” Black Hat whispered, “ham it up. We’re salesman.” 

Flug concentrated and then, in a fit of desperation, threw his arms in the air and waved the glowsticks like he was eight minutes deep in a grand mal seizure.

_“Yes, sir!”_

Black Hat turned back to the camera looking deeply, deeply pained. He suppressed his second-hand embarrassment and continued. Flug wanted to knock back a litre of ethanol.

“Rest assured, my assistant had no hand in any of the good products. I just let him out of the shame-basement to stretch his legs. Now then…”

He pulled a cane out of thin air, using it to enhance his already striking silhouette, handling it with grace as he effortlessly swung it between his fingers before clicking the ground with it.

“Don’t believe my claims? _Then you’re an idiot!_ But let’s pretend you aren’t and have stolen a television from a ship that’s washed up on your hermit-island after finally escaping that rock you have been living under. I have personally lead a crusade against do-gooders. _Successfully._ Have you heard of any sort of superhero leagues? Any kind of heroic conglomerate that gets off on slapping flawless, tophat-wearing genocidal maniacs?”

“No,” Flug said.

“Exactly. I have it all! Cults, power, understanding of things beyond your ken, blood, death, reckonings, torture, _fourteen years of ballet, ten of ballroom and eight of tap!”_

“You’re losing focus,” Flug whispered, feeling this train veer off track.

“I know, I don’t give a shit; if I’m going to be dancing on graves I want these sluggards to know I’m going to be _fantastic at it!”_

“I-- I’m not sure you should be calling customers these things if you want to appeal to people.”

“‘Cunts’?”

Flug clutched his face.

_“That’s so much worse!”_

“You have two choices. People are going to be buying these weapons, of course they are,” he dripped, like honey, lying through his teeth, “and that leaves you in quite the pickle. Unless you buy them as well. Oh, what’s that? Your neighbour has a laser beam that turns tomatoes into three hundred foot battlefruits? Oh, I’m sure your gun will fend that off, oh, I’m sure. Or you have a gigatomato yourself and _ensure_ your own personal safety! Consider it, won’t you? In any case, our death toll will be immense.”

Flug raised his hand.

“Does… Does that death toll include me, sir?”

“Of course not! Shut up! I have a good thing going here!”

And Flug, despite the faint praise that statement offered, was deeply touched.

“Black Hat Incorporated,” he crooned, signing off. “‘For villains. By villains. And also petty criminals with money. But mostly villains’.”

He bowed, signalling the end of the take. Flug applauded, clattering the sticks together.

“How was that?”

“Fantastic, sir. But I’m still not sure about the new tagline.”

“If it works it works. We just need a few poses, right? Get a few glamour shots going, I say, as if every shot isn’t a glamour shot when I’m in it.”

“Right! Should I pose too?”

“Not after that. You stand beside the bear. Look threatening. Punch it a little.”

Flug felt his stomach twist.

“Ah, sir, shouldn’t you be, you know…”

“No, I don’t know. Come out with it.”

“The thing we talked about, at lunch.”

Flug made a wavering motion with his hands, unsure if he should continue.

“You know. _That_ demographic?”

Black Hat looked at him flatly, pinched the expanse of skin between his eyes and let out the longest, weariest sigh of his life.

“Fine. Sex sells, doesn’t it.”

“Does exposing an ankle count as ‘sex’?”

“I get the feeling that’s not the first time you’ve had to ask that question.”

Black Hat grimly rolled up the fabric of his trousers on one leg, exposing an evil, malevolent, slightly hairy calf to the camera.

“Is that enough. Is this it. Will this draw people in. Drink it in you degenerates.”

“People will be climaxing violently in the streets, sir!”

“Oh shut up,” he spat, “you’re a terrible liar.”

Flug sighed, closing his eyes and rolling at a knot in his neck with his hand. If he kept up his current lifestyle it would be the size of a grapefruit by the end of the month.

He opened his eyes to find Dementia staring him down, millimetres from his face.

“J-Jesus!”

“I heard the sound of a naked ankle!”

Flug whipped his head to Black Hat, asking ‘did you see her come in?’ with the desperate look in his eyes.

“No,” Black Hat responded, as confused as Flug.  

She bounded over to Black Hat, tongue lolling from the side of her mouth.

“Need help tapping into the monsterfucker market?”

And Black Hat still, somehow, in his cold, blackened heart, found a way to be surprised.

“‘Monsterfucker’?”

“Oh yeah! People pay shitloads for those pictures of you sleeping. You’re a cute snorer.”

**_“What.”_ **

Dementia shifted her weight from foot to foot, restless as always.

“But you need to really sell it; take your shirt off, then wipe down your brow after a long day of cutting lumber, sweat cascading down your _rippling_ abdominal muscles!”

“We-- A city, we live in the middle of a city, who cuts lumber?”

“You! After you’re done hoisting sails and flexing, naked, in the moonlight, your skin gleaming with the blood of your victims.”

“What plane of reality do you live on so I can avoid it forever.”

“This stuff is easy! Check this out.”

Dementia pulled up her top and exposed herself to the camera. 5.0.5 covered his eyes, Black Hat spluttered, aghast and Flug, acting on instinct, attempted to hide her shame with the glowsticks. This development pushed Black Hat from restrained anger to shrieking apoplexy.

_“Cloak your tits at once! Obscure your milkers; I will not have you ruin another broadcast!”_

“Do you like the piercing? It’s new!”

_“I don’t care!”_

She giggled, her day livened up and all eyes on her. She smoothed her shirt back into place, Black Hat looming over. He smelled fantastic, like a butcher’s shop on a hot day.

“I didn’t have enough cash on hand to get it done at a piercing place or whatever, but there is tonnes of shit you can do with a nail you found on the street, whisky, a towel and a glue gun!”

“A-At least you sterilised it,” Flug said, desperately looking for a bright spot in the catastrophe that was now this shoot.

“At least I did what now.”

“Oh no.”

Things were going well. Flug’s patience was considerable, but he felt his anger simmer over. It wasn’t a meltdown. Not yet.

“You can’t keep doing that,” Flug said. “Remember the bowling alley? When I bowled a strike and you got us kicked out before I could win the game because you screamed ‘dementia ain’t just for the oldies’ and tore off your skirt.”

“I had fun!”

“It took eight people to catch you. We’re banned for life. I loved that place. The onion rings are great.”

“The onion rings were great,” she corrected. “Since you can’t ever have them again.”

Flug nursed his migraine, rubbing at his temples. In an effort to mentally escape he looked to cute, plush 5.0.5, then felt his balls drop out through his feet and hit the molten core of the planet. He was shaking.

“Um… Sir…”

_“What.”_

“Please promise that you won’t get angry.”

Black Hat’s body remained stationary but his neck twisted with several stomach-churning pops to let him face Flug. He was beyond the point of shouting, beyond the point of stamping his feet, beyond the point of making a show of things. This was quiet, tranquil wrath. Black Hat hadn’t blinked for four minutes, his eyes large and glassy, as if painted, his pupils shaking gently within.

“I promise,” he said, in a manner that was distressingly sing-song.

“5.0.5, he… He started chewing on the yarn.”

“Yes.”

“And… And then the cabling. When we weren’t looking. I think the coloured lights drew him in.”

“I see. Do go on.”

“Cambot has been disabled the entire time.”

“The entire time?”

“The entire time.”

Black Hat nodded gently. He then hummed in thought, held his chin in his hand, pondered his life, let out a deleterious screech and tore his own face off. Flug dropped, cowering, mashing his palms to his ears to stop them from bleeding. He could almost sense Dementia become moist.

“You promised you wouldn’t be angry!”

Black Hat grabbed Flug by the shoulders and thrashed him back and forth, Black Hat’s face now consisting entirely of teeth and noise.

 _“I’m evil!_ **_I̪̥̬͍̠̙͙ ̲̣̮̗̗L͉̩I̮̪̗̗̬̬E̘̭͔̼̺̝̭͚,͎͙ ̙̺͓̫F͕̥͖̼̭͉͉ḼU̟G̜̺͍͎!̝̭͓_ ** _”_

Flug blenched, adrenaline spiking, a dark part of him thrilled at the attention. He was terrified, certainly, but the focus, the one-on-one interaction, the _need_ for Flug to be there even if it was just to be shamed, the salve of interaction--

Black Hat was the closest thing he had to a friend. It didn’t matter what he was saying, in desperation Flug would feed on it like a glut of leeches on a calf, every mocking, warped syllable as it rolled off the tongue, he hung on every rasp like a noose. Flug zoned out in the cacophony meant only for him, vacant, blissful and still holding the glowsticks.

**Author's Note:**

> take that, me!


End file.
